This is the centenary of the annus mirabilis and would be highlighted that Albert Einstein obtained none of the formulas of special relativity. Anyone associates E=mc² to the name and fame of Einstein, but the equation is not from him and was already used by some other authors, e.g. Poincar.

The famous two postulates of special relativity were also formulated before the famous annus mirabilis. Lorentz obtained famous mass Einstein formula in a previous paper, etc. Why then did this sound error take place?

Reply is complex and one may properly valuate a mixture of historical imprecision of early biographies (e.g. that by Pais), lack of some relevant papers recently discovered (e.g. a printed proof of a relevant paper by Hilbert), popularization by Edington, and others in the style of most heavy string hype (it is now broadly recognized that data of famous eclipse of 1919 was manipulated to agree with Einstein theories), the fact that Poincar was more mathematician than physicist, etc.

A heated discussion on the role of Einstein on relativity theory began this year on the moderated newsgroup sci.physics.research. A number of websites are focusing in this point. Unfortunately some website are not accurate on details.

Source: Canonical Science Blog

New historical data, some interesting references, and quotes of famous scientists supporting these views (Hawking, Born, Weis, etc) are available on what is history of relativity theory?

New data

A colleague informed to me of the next important data.

In the cited letter (see above link) to Seelig, Einstein said that in 1905 he had known only of Lorentz’s 1895 paper, but not his subsequent papers, and none of Poincare’s papers on the subject.

It was already shown that Einstein read and copied Poincar work. Now, new data suggests that Einstein learned Lorentz work directly, instead of from Poincar works.

Einstein copied Lorentz’s papers, even to the point of using the same symbol b for the relativistic parameter 1/(1-(v/c)²)^1/2, which Lorentz used in his 1904 after Lorentz’s 1895 paper but before the annus mirabilis.